er here nor there with
him," said the Cornal.

Miss Mary was upon her knees.

"The batteries are to open fire on San Vincent; seven eighteen-pounders
and half a dozen howitzers are scarcely enough for that job. Tell
Mackellar to move up two hundred yards farther on the right."

The General babbled again of his wars in a child's accent, that rose now
and then stormily to the vehemence of the battle-field. "_Columns deploy
on the right centre company.... No, no, close column on the rear of the
Grenadiers_.... I wish, I wish.... Jock, Jock, where's your boy now? I
cannot see him, I'm sore feared he's hiding in the sutler's vans. I knew
him for a dreamer from the first day I saw him.... That's Williams gone
and my step to Major come. God sain him! we could have better spared
another man.... _Halt, dress!_"

He opened his eyes again and they fell upon Gilian. "You mind me of a
boy I once knew," said he. "Poor boy, poor boy, what a pity of you! My
sister Mary would have liked you. I think we never gave her her due, and
indeed she had a generous hand."

"Here she's at your side, dear Dugald," said his sister, and her head
went down upon his breast.

"So she is," said he, arousing to the fact; "I might be sure she would
be there!" He disengaged the hand she had in hers, and wearily placed
it for a moment on her hair with an awkward effort at fondling. "Are
you tired, my dear?" he said, repeating it in the Gaelic. "It's a dreich
dreich dying on a feather bed." He smiled once more feebly, and Gilian
screamed, for the kitten had touched him on the leg.

"Go downstairs, this is no place for you, my dear," said Miss Mary; and
he went willingly, hearing a stertorous breathing in the bed behind him.

PART II

CHAPTER XX--THE RETURN

When the General died, the household in the high burgh land suffered a
change marvellous enough considering how little that old man musing in
his parlour had had to do for years with its activities. Cornal Colin
would sit of an evening with candles extravagantly burning more numerous
than before to make up for the glowing heart extinguished; the long
winter nights, black and stifling and immense around the burgh town, and
the wind with a perpetual moan among the trees, would find him abandoned
to his sorry self, looking into the fire, the week's paper on his knees
unread, and him full of old remembrances and regrets. It had become for
him a parlour full of ghosts. He could not, in O